


Hold Out Against the Night

by reasonswhy



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 05:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6891457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reasonswhy/pseuds/reasonswhy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After talking with Strand, Alex leaves the Institute only to find a man waiting for her at her car. It goes south from there.</p>
<p>It’s just one of those days, she guesses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Out Against the Night

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: It’s been a long time since I’ve written fic for any fandom, but here we are. This is set immediately after Alex and Strand talk at the Institute at the end of 2x1 / beginning of 2x2.
> 
> Title from the very excellent song "Elysium" by Bear's Den.

When it happens, Alex supposes she should be scared. And she is. Sort of. Her heart is racing and her hands are trembling, but more than fear, her overwhelming feeling is, well, of annoyance. 

There’s a gun pressed against her back, steering her toward where she parked her rental car in the Strand Institute parking lot, and she’s _annoyed_. Maybe this is her proof that she’s going crazy, after all.

It’s just that she’s supposed to check in with Nic in an hour; she has a plane to catch in the morning; and if she doesn’t call her mother tonight, there’s going to be hell to pay on Sunday. _Aren’t you tired of talking with crazy people every day?_ and _If you were married, I wouldn’t have to worry about you so much._  

“Don’t make a sound, Ms. Reagan,” the man says from behind her.

Alex thinks about yelling for help, but instead, she tilts her head back to look at the man for the first time. It’s dark out—she and Strand had talked for ages in his office—but the parking lot lights give her a clear enough picture. He’s only an inch or two taller than she is, with stringy brown hair that brushes his shoulders. He’s wearing a dark blue button-down and jeans. She’s never seen him before in her life.

But this man clearly knows _her_. She assumes he must be a listener—her professional life has taken over her personal life, so she can’t imagine she’s attracted a stalker for any other reason than the podcast.

“If you scream—” He presses the barrel of the gun more firmly against her back. “—I’ll shoot.”

She _wants_ to scream that she’s too tired for this. Weary and exhausted in a way she’s never been before. Not while pulling all-nighters at university, not while working late at Pacific Northwest Stories. It’s deeper somehow, a weight that she has to carry around. She feels jittery, too, keeps flinching at loud sounds and second-guessing everything she does.

She thought finally talking to Strand would help, and it did. A little. This has never been a game to her— _journalism_ has never been a game to her. The Black Tapes are a puzzle she’s trying to figure out, but she hopes that wanting— _needing_ —to see the whole picture hasn’t made her lose sight of the individual pieces along the way.

Still, with him pressing her to turn off the recorder, to shield his secrets from the listeners, things feel _unsettled_ between them.

Except for right at the end, before she left. He had asked if she was doing all right, his voice as gentle as she’s ever heard it. She had been tempted to point out that _he_ was the one with the Carrie Mathison wall, but the sincerity in his expression kept her from doing so. Instead, she told him she was fine, and told herself it was true.

But she knows how close she came to breaking down. Because with the insomnia, the circles under her eyes—dark and unavoidable—hearing about Rebecca, Alex is… Alex is not so sure that she’s all right.

She’s starting to feel a little… unhinged.

“Get in the car.”

And now she’s also starting to feel a little kidnapped.

The gun jerks against her again, and fear rushes through her more strongly now.

Alex fumbles with the keys in her coat pocket, fingers brushing against her phone, and unlocks the door. She climbs into the driver’s side of the rental, a black Camry that smells the faintest bit like smoke, and stays silent as he walks around to the other door.

Alex has never thought much about what you’re supposed to do in a situation like this. She could run, sure, but the parking lot is empty, save for Strand and Ruby’s cars. Plus, the building is far away, and her abductor has a gun. The whole thing feels terribly like a dream, like this is happening to some other version of herself.

Surely when Nic calls, he’ll realize something is wrong. Alex always answers her phone. Or maybe Strand will walk out and see her with someone else in the car. If he ever leaves his office. He finally sent her back to her hotel to sleep, saying he was just going to go over a few more things.

She has a sudden vision of him using the final blank wall in his office to figure out where she’s gone, stringing together every clue he can find. She presses cold fingers against her mouth to keep a hysterical giggle from slipping out.

“Turn on the car,” the man snaps. “And give me your phone.”

As she pulls her cell from her pocket, she feels her last glimmer of hope fade. The man turns it off, then sets it in the cup holder. Alex watches him for a moment before she backs carefully out of the space.

And then they drive. The man keeps the gun trained on her as he barks out directions. Left, then right, then left again. She keeps hoping someone will glance over and see a glint of metal or her strained expression, but it’s dark now and the back roads they take are free from other cars.

When the clock ticks past eleven, she finally risks talking. “What do you want with me?”

There’s no answer. _Okay, then._ She glances at him for just a moment. A lone streetlight casts a dim glow across his face, and she realizes he’s younger than she thought. Early forties, maybe. “Where are you taking me?”

This time, she gets an answer. “Out of the city. He’ll know where.”

“He?” She has a sudden urge to pretend she’s doing an interview. _Can you explain who you’re talking about for our listeners?_

“He never listens to me, but now he will.” He says it under his breath, almost like he’s talking to himself.

Alex asks again what he wants from her, what he plans to do, but she’s met with silence and figures she shouldn’t press her luck when there’s a presumably loaded gun pointed in her direction.

They drive for another ten minutes—Alex guesses they’ve gone about twenty miles from the Institute, in all—when the man tells her to turn off the main road and into a neighborhood. They twist and turn past painfully normal-looking one-story houses.

When he finally tells her to stop in front of one of the houses, she lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Surely this is better than being dumped in the middle of nowhere. Surely a neighbor will notice something’s gone wrong. Her phone may be off, but maybe she can find a way to get it back at some point.

“Get out of the car,” the man orders.

Alex is growing used to his voice, soft but insistent. Nothing about him is particularly intimidating, which, for whatever reason, makes the whole thing feel worse.

Then he marches her through the yard, snapping at her to get up when she trips in a hole. Her ankle smarts from where it twisted, but she’s still in one piece. For now.

To her surprise, they don’t go inside the house, but walk around to the fence gate and into the back yard. He leads her straight to a wooden garden shed that looks like it’s painted a dark green. _A shed_ , she thinks. _I’m going to die in a garden shed_.

The man yanks open the door and shoves her inside.

Despite the whole having a gun thing, she doesn’t think he _means_ to hurt her. But when he pushes her, her smarting ankle gives out and she crumples against a windowpane that’s immediately to the right of the door. Her head catches its edge, and she hisses in pain as she bounces to the floor. When she raises a hand to her temple, her fingers come away tipped in red.

_Damn_.

The man looks startled for a moment before taking a breath and springing into action. The moonlight through the window provides a sorry excuse for light in the shed, but she can see a chair on the other side of the otherwise empty room. He carries it to where Alex is still sprawled, hoists her off the ground, and plops her onto it. With rope retrieved from somewhere in the shed, he ties first her wrists behind her back, and then her legs to the chair’s legs. She flinches when he touches her sprained ankle, but he doesn’t seem to notice—or care.

Then, without any other explanation, he marches to the door. “I’ll be back. Don’t bother trying to escape.”

She hears the lock turn, then lets out a sigh. The blood has crusted on the side of her face, and her stomach roils with nerves. She yells for help, strains against the rope, and tries her best to move the chair toward the door. All she gets for her effort is a worsening headache.

Alex has never been one to get maudlin, so she refuses to imagine worst-case scenarios. Someone will notice she’s missing. Nic or Strand or someone else at the studio. She always sticks to her schedule.

She tries to figure out how much time has passed, tries to force herself to stay awake in case she has a concussion, but slowly, inevitably, her chin tips toward her chest and true darkness settles around her.

When Alex finally opens her eyes, she finds the man crouching beside her chair. The sky outside looks lighter than it did the last time she remembers look at the window, so she must have been out for hours. Who knew that all she needed to get a good night’s sleep was a head wound and a foray into kidnapping?

She doesn’t bother to say anything as the man cuts the ropes from her hands. When she raises them back in front of her, red burns wrap around her wrists.

“Call him.” He thrusts Alex’s phone in her face.

“Call who?” She’s having a hard time focusing, the room spinning. She wonders why he’s freeing her now, what he was waiting for before.

“He won’t listen to me,” the man mutters. “He never listens to me. But he’ll listen to you.”

He shakes the phone at her, and she takes with trembling hands before asking again, “Who do you want me to call?”

“Dr. Strand, of course.”

It occurs to her then, perhaps much later than it should have, that she’s being held for ransom. Or, not ransom, exactly, but leverage. Because this man wants something from Strand. She considers pointing out that, not even twenty-four hours ago, she wouldn’t have been sure whether Strand would have bothered coming to find her.

But that’s unfair, she thinks. Strand ignored her calls, was upset and angry, but she genuinely thinks he’s a good person. If he knew she were in trouble, he would help. She believes that, even if everything thing else in her life feels like an unknown.

Wrists burning, she unlocks her phones. It’s just after six in the morning, which means she’s been gone close to eight hours hours. Her phone alerts her that she has twelve missed calls from Strand. Absurdly, she feels a rush of pleasure at finally being the one out of reach. Alex is used to calling sources and following up, but with Strand, it’s different. _He’s_ different.

_Jesus_. Just how hard did she hit her head?

Alex pulls up his number and waits for the ringing to start.

He answers immediately. “Alex?” He sounds unsure, on edge, like he’s expecting someone else’s voice to come over the line.

“Hi, this is Alex Reagan,” she says, and her voice is scratchy. “I’m returning one of… twelve calls from someone named Richard Strand.”

He huffs out a laugh—or what she’s come to know passes as a laugh with Strand—and she’s glad for it. But when he starts talking, there’s no levity in his voice. It’s calm, but there’s an underlying hint of alarm. “Alex, where are you? You stopped answering your phone, and Nic said you never made it back. The security footage—”

The man cuts off Strand from where he’s looming above her. “Give the phone to me.”

“Actually,” she tells Strand, trying to keep panic from leeching into her voice, “I’m in a bit of a situation. I—”

She hears him say her name as the man grabs the phone. “Hello, Dr. Strand. It’s Davis Becker.”

She hates only being able to hear one end of the conversation. But she listens carefully as the man, Becker, tells Strand he already knows where to find Alex. As he says he promised Strand this would happen, that they wouldn’t be in this situation if Strand had just _listened_.

His voice rises at the end, but when he glances at Alex, he smiles blandly. “And Dr. Strand? Don’t bring anyone. I know you’d hate to have a second woman just… disappear on your watch.”

And then he ends the call, slips Alex’s phone into his pocket, and takes a seat at the opposite end of the shed. It feels like time has come to a standstill, but more and more light creeps into the space. And as it does, she sees what she missed before—there are symbols everywhere. Etched into the walls like the ones in Simon Reese’s room, like the ones in the cabin where Sebastian Torres was taken.

And as the sun climbs higher in the morning sky, she knows exactly what’s going to appear on the wall to her right. She knows _exactly_ what the man had been waiting for.

She swallows and forces herself to look toward where Becker is sitting on the floor of the shed. “What do you want from Dr. Strand?”

“What do I _want_?” He laughs, and the sound chases a chill down Alex’s spine. “About fourteen months ago, I approached the Strand Institute with… let’s call it an issue.”

“What sort of issue?”

“It was little things at first. A noise behind me, a flash of something in the mirror. But then I started to hear a voice, almost like a whisper, asking me to free Him.”

Alex knows she needs to keep him talking, forces herself to pretend this is a normal day at work. If she can figure out what he plans to do with Strand, maybe she can figure out how to make it out of here alive. “How long did that last?”

“Oh, about a few weeks,” he says casually. “But then it got worse. I felt like the voice was forcing me to do things. I started losing time, a few minutes here, a few minutes there. I was afraid to tell my doctor I was hearing voices, so I went to Dr. Strand. A colleague of mine had gone to a lecture of his a few months before, and I remembered the name.”

“And what did Dr. Strand say?”

“He met with me, came to my house. To this shed, actually—I was gardening outside when I first heard the voice, so I showed him the exact spot. That’s the sort of thing I used to do, you know? Garden. But Strand didn’t find anything unusual either.” He smiles, cruelly. “ _Stress_ , he told me. I hadn’t been sleeping well, even before this started, and he said I was suffering from insomnia. Hallucinations are a nasty side effect of that, as I’m sure you’re finding out.”

Alex catches her lip between her teeth. She’s not sure how Becker had guessed, but what’s happening to her isn’t like what’s happened to him. It’s not.

“So I believed him. I filled a prescription for Ambien, but everything got worse. I lost more time. _Hours_ , Ms. Reagan. A fugue state, they call it. My wife left me, after a while; she said she was scared of who I had become.” Another smile. “But that all ends now. I finally figured out what the voice wants, what He wants. And Dr. Strand is going to help me.”

She opens her mouth to ask more, but before she can, there’s a perfunctory knock on the shed door. Again, almost hysterically, she thinks of the podcast.

_More, after the break._

The door pushes open before Becker can move, and Strand appears in the doorway. He has on the same clothes he was wearing yesterday, uncharacteristic wrinkles on his uncharacteristic flannel. He looks about as bad as Alex feels. His eyes immediately find hers, and she offers up what she hopes translates as smile. _Fine_ , she mouths, because his gaze is locked on the dried blood at her temple.

“You better not have brought anyone with you,” Becker says.

Strand turns toward Becker. “You said to come alone.”

Which, Alex thinks, is not an answer at all. Strand doesn’t meet her eyes again, but she feels her heart lift. He wouldn’t have come here unprepared, wouldn’t have been impulsive or jumped to conclusions about what to do. Help is here, or at least on its way.

Becker walks closer to Strand and reaches around him to close the shed door. The gun is still a permanent fixture in his hand, although he isn’t pointing it at anyone. “Do you remember me, Dr. Strand?”

“I do.” His voice is steady, and Alex envies his ability to sound so damnably sure of himself at all times, no matter the circumstances.

“And do you remember that you told me I was jumping to conclusions? That my imagination was running away from me?”

Strand doesn’t answer right away; he just watches as Becker moves toward Alex. He stops directly behind her, and Alex forces herself not to flinch as he traces a line down her cheek.

“My wife looked a bit like Ms. Reagan, don’t you think?” Becker sounds almost thoughtful. “I don’t blame her for leaving me,” he adds conversationally. “I do, however, blame you, Dr. Strand.”

“And what would you like me to do about your current situation?” Strand asks. He takes a small step toward them, and then another when Becker doesn’t stop him.

“You’re going to open the portal,” Becker says. “You know how; I know you do. That’s what He wants.”

Alex swallows, wishes Becker would stop touching her. She’s vividly aware of the gun in Becker’s other hand, knows that he could shoot her—or Strand—and she would be helpless to stop it. She wishes she could go back to before, where this felt like a dream and her fear floated out of reach.

Because now? Now, she’s terrified.

“What who wants, Mr. Becker?”

Strand takes another step, and that’s when everything changes. Becker raises the gun and swings it toward Alex. She swallows the immediate rush of panic and glances past Strand and toward the door. Surely Strand brought help. Surely she wasn’t wrong about him rushing in unprepared.

“Calm down,” Strand says, and he still sounds so infuriatingly composed. “Don’t do anything rash.”

Easy for him to say, the impossible man. He’s not the one tied to a chair with a gun to their head.

“Call Him, or I’ll kill Ms. Reagan.” The cool steel of the gun presses against the gash on her temple. Alex forces herself not to react, forces herself to keep her eyes open. “Call the demon, open the portal.”

Strand holds out his hands in front of him and steps back. “All right. Lower the gun, and I’ll start.”

Becker refuses, and as the gun stays pointed at her.

Strand meets her eyes and inclines his head the smallest bit. Then, he positions himself in front of the symbols, in front of the sunlight cross that’s appeared on the wall. He murmurs words in a language she’s never heard. She has no idea what he’s saying, whether it’s some ancient ritual or complete gibberish, but Becker seems transfixed.

Which is why, when the door bursts open and police officers fill the shed, Becker has no time to raise the gun that’s hanging harmlessly at his side. The officers swarm immediately, dragging him away from Alex.

 Strand has the opposite reaction. He rushes to her, drops to his knees and begins untying the rope from her ankles. “Are you hurt? Alex, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she says. “A little concussed, maybe, but fine.”

 “Fine,” Strand repeats slowly, testing the word. His eyes are bright behind his glasses. “I don’t know that I believe you.”

“You don’t have to be skeptical of everything,” she murmurs, but the room spins a little, and maybe’s he right to be second-guess her.

“Alex.” His hands grip her tightly to stop her from listing sideways. “ _Alex_.”

“Sorry,” she murmurs, and she thinks it’s more exhaustion than anything else. Maybe a little bit of shock. She catches his hand where it’s resting on her shoulder. “I promise I’m all right, Richard.”

And then the paramedics walk in, kneeling in front of both of them.

After that, everything happens in a blur. There’s the police to talk to, and then a hospital visit that Alex protests fruitlessly. (She really, really hates hospitals.)

She does put her foot down at having to stay overnight. Other than a gimpy ankle and rope burn, her only other injury is a minor concussion. It’s been a while, but she’s had a concussion before and knows what to expect.

Strand, who’s somehow hoodwinked the hospital staff into letting him stay by her side, steps in to say that he can stay with Alex at her hotel and check in on her as needed.

And then, just like that, they’re free to go.

Strand insists on driving her to the hotel—not that she could refuse, considering her rental car is now evidence. There’s another flight she can take back to Seattle in a day or two, and when Alex thanks Strand for staying there with her, he just brushes her off.

When they get to the room, Alex calls and soothes a frantic Nic, who, despite being updated by Strand, is understandably worried. While she does that, Strand orders room service. It’s not until after she’s showered the past twenty-four hours off her and they’re eating in relative silence that Alex asks, “What did you use as the demon summoning? Something fake?”

Strand shakes his head. “Those were the real words. Or, at least, the words that someone who believes you can open a portal to hell would use.”

She grins at him. “Are you worried you summoned a demon, Dr. Strand?”

“Of course not.” There’s a pause, and then his lips quirk up, as he says, “But I didn’t finish the ritual. If you were worried.”

Alex laughs, and despite the twinge of pain it sends shooting through her head, it’s worth it when Strand does, too.

They’re quiet for a moment as Strand clears the food away. Alex moves from the chair to one of the beds, feeling like a freight train has hit her.

Strand crosses the room and sits across from her on the other double bed. “Are you sure you’re all right?” He means from the past day, but more than that, too.

Alex manages a small smile that she hopes doesn’t look as shaky as it feels. “Yeah, I think so. If I start seeing things and hearing voices, promise me you’ll be there to remind me that it’s just insomnia.”

“Sleep deprivation wreaks havoc on the human body, Alex.”

“I know.” She lifts a shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble sleeping now.”

He laughs under his breath, and then reaches to turn out the light on the nightstand between him. She realizes that he must be as tired as she feels. She would bet anything that he hasn’t slept since he realized something had happened to her. On their way back to the hotel, he had told her about trying to figure out who had taken her from the security footage, how he had called the police to alert them, and then again when Becker had finally let Alex use her phone.

“I wasn’t worried,” she says into the darkness. “For the record.” Her words are soft, and they both know she’s talking about more than just the threat of a demon she’s not sure she believes in.

Silence stretches for a long moment before Strand breaks it. “I was.”

She wants to say something, but can’t find the words.

“Sleep well, Alex,” he says finally.

She closes her eyes and does just that.


End file.
